Pte 49077 Cyril Hayden

• Age: 23
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: A.10

Cyril Hayden was born in Liverpool on the 11th of August 1893, the youngest child of Bartholomew Hayden who was born in Liverpool, and his wife Bridget (nee Flaherty), who was born in Dublin. The couple married in November 1868 at All Saints in Liverpool. Cyril was baptised on the 10th September 1893 in St Johns Church, Liverpool, the baptism records show that the family lived at Upper Mason Street and that Bartholomew was a bootmaker.

Bartholomew and Bridget go on to have eighteen children. The first two children are baptised in Liverpool, but those born between 1872-1887 are baptised in Dublin, so the family spend some time living in Ireland.

The 1891 census, which is the first taken since their return to Liverpool shows them having ten living children. Bartholomew is 47, and is a shoemaker which he has been and will remain his whole life. Bridget is 40 and is a dressmaker, as is their daughter Alicia aged 20. William aged 18 is a brass finisher. The other children are: Anne aged 13, Phoebe 11, Bartholomew 10, James 8, Enoch 6, Henrietta 4, Herbert 2 and Grace 1 month old. The family is living at 3 Sun Street.

The 1901 census records the family living at 26 Grove Street, Liverpool. Bartholomew and Bridget are living with six of their children, Maria aged 27 and who is working as a general servant, Bartholomew junior a cycle makers improver, Enoch a barman, and Henrietta, Herbert and Grace.

Cyril who had been born in 1893 was 7 at the time of the 1901 census and he is found in Pendleton, Lancashire at 1 West Towers Street living in the household of his newly wed sister Phoebe and Edgar, her husband . Also living with them is James, their 18 year old brother. Edgar and James are working as travelling pickle salesmen.

Sometime later in 1901 Phoebe and Edgar moved to London. Three of their children who were born between 1902 and 1907 were born there, and Cyril lived with them at that time. The London Schools Admission Register shows Cyril aged 8 entering Arthur Street School, Southwark, on the 23rd September 1901 giving his address as 644 Old Kent Road.

By 1911 Phoebe and family, and Cyril are back in Liverpool. The 1911 census shows Cyril living back with his parents at 3, Angela Street. Cyril and his sister Grace are working as press operators on the telephones, and their brother Herbert is working as a brass finisher. Bartholomew and Bridget have been married for 42 years. The rest of their living children are married.

Cyril enlisted in Liverpool and was serving in the 20th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 49077 when he was killed in action on the 9th April 1917 during the Battle of Arras.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the 9th April 1917 for the 17th, 19th & 20th Battalions in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool):

The 89th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19th King's on the right and the 20th King’s on the left. The 17th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and the 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19th and 20th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10th April.

Of the 17th King’s - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

Cyril now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France.

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

He was listed as wounded in the press on 16th May 1917 in a column headed: "Irish sounding names

Soldiers effects and pension to his mother Bridget.

His father Bartholomew died in 1915, and his mother Bridget in 1922.

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